Stuart McPhail Hall was born on February 3 1932 in Kingston, Jamaica, into a middle class family which subscribed to what he called "the colonial romance". His father, Herman, was the first non-white person to hold a senior position – chief accountant – with United Fruit in Jamaica. Both his parents had non-African components in their ancestry, though as he recalled: "I was always the blackest member of my family and I knew it from the moment I was born."

Growing up in what he called the "pigmentocracy" of the colonial West Indies had a profound effect on Hall's childhood and outlook. His mother forbade him from inviting black school friends home, even though to white eyes he was black himself. When his sister fell in love with a black medical student, their mother barred her from seeing him. As a result she suffered a mental breakdown.

Jazzmine Raine mother is a third generation Canadian, with Irish, English, Scottish and Spanish bloodlines whereas her father is a second generation Canadian with an Antiguan father and St Lucian mother. PHOTO: KENDA AL YAKOB

With unprecedented levels of immigration, globalisation and the forced displacement of populations worldwide, the intermingling of races, cultures and ethnic groups may become the â€˜normâ€™ in the decades to come. Many countries in the world are now host to a multiplicity of racial groups, particularly countries such as the US and Canada, due to their distinct historical path towards constructing a national identity.

Ironically, over the years, phenomena such as racial profiling have become even more widespread. Is this owed to the ever-changing global order, an increasingly narrow and stringent concept of national security, or is it simply age-old racism disguising itself in new clothes?

In order to protect the purity of races historically, many parts of the world had anti-miscegenation laws in place. The US is one good example where anti-miscegenation laws came under considerable heat for making interracial unions illegal. The â€˜one-drop ruleâ€™ also persisted in the country for a long time whereby anyone with a single Black ancestor would be considered Black…

…In most parts of the Global North, it is speculated to be the fastest growing group. Nonetheless, scholars such as Minelle Mahtani, warn against the romanticisation of mixed race people as the dawn of a new world since the racialization of bodies continues to persist and affect their experiences even in the Global North, and in a world where even the label â€˜mixedâ€™ inevitably evokes the idea of partial â€˜Whitenessâ€™ in popular imagination.